“PERFECTED CONTROL”

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21214, 10 September 1940, Page 4

“PERFECTED CONTROL”

When Mr Nash addressed the economic conference now sitting at Wellington he made the remark that “ it was fortunate for New Zealand that the Government had perfected a method of allocation of overseas funds before the war broke out. This meant that the whole New Zealand economy needed no radical change, in that overseas remittances of money were all under public control.” Possibly the Minister permitted himself a glow of pride at his seeming prescience, but the public could not fail to remember that this state of preparedness was due not to conscious planning for such an emergency but to an effort to correct the effects of previous financial policy. There may be an inclination to regard such control by the State as a permanent necessity even in times of peace and to quote the present war situation as proof, and it is as well that all the facts of the situation should be remembered. Of course in war time the State must have its controlling hand on the life of 'the nation, and nobody objects to it, but on the return to peace the question is bound to arise whether the selective control of imports, for instance, should be maintained. Over-importation was due not to an inevitable sequence of events but definitely to the financial policy of the Government. Therefore if the internal policy is corrected and adjusted the necessity for and the desirability of import restrictions might cease to exist.

In the last war New Zealand was responsible for a magnificent effort in production and the supply of manpower without anything like the present regimentation, and the consequence was that the return to peace-time conditions was comparatively simple. Certainly the war was followed by economic instability, and booms and slumps disturbed the whole world, but it could scarcely be claimed that economic nationalism would have offered any remedy; indeed exactly the reverse was the case. The point at the moment is, however, that Mr Nash claims to have “ perfected ” a system of control—a system that in other circumstances might be far from perfect. In the meantime it must be remembered that that system was instituted as a stop-gap and it should not be accepted as necessarily a good thing in itself in normal times.